Mamie had a copy of l’Essor Savoyard from this week lying around, so I read through it to check out the happenings in and around Annecy. (Unfortunately, this local newspaper doesn’t have a website, but the other one does: Le Dauphiné.)

Troops from the 27e BCA, which is located directly across from the lycée I taught at in 2006, will be leaving for Afghanistan shortly. 640 soldiers will leave in November and December for the bases in Nijrab and Tagab. It’s a little surreal to know that the guys I see jogging around Seynod and buying beer at LeClerc will be halfway around the world next month. I remember when Sarkozy announced he was going to send more troops to Afghanistan, but I never thought it would be my boys from BCA.

Second-hand clothing stores are becoming more and more popular since the pouvoir d’achat keeps decreasing and everyone is freaking out about the crise financière. I really need to check these out:

Bazar sans Frontières, 3 av. de Trois Fontaines in Seynod

Emmaüs, 18 impasse des Bois in Metz-Tessy

Scouts des Cluses, 26 av. de Pont de Tasset in Meythet

Vestiaire St. Martin, 3 rue des Jardins in Annecy (This place also has showers for 1 €, originally designed for anyone to use a half century ago when many people did not have showers in their homes, but now they mostly serve the homeless.)

A recent survey of Savoyards in the Ligue Savoisienne indicated that 87% would like Savoie & Haute-Savoie to separate from France and become a canton of Switzerland. Complete independence would be better, but joining Switzerland would be easier – and the main idea is to leave behind the “le pouvoir central le plus autocratique et le plus jacobin qu’on ait connu depuis 50 ans.” Even the Swiss who participated voted in favor of Savoie becoming suisse, 43.7% to 37.5%.

L’arpitan, also called franco-provençal, is the original language in the Savoie area. Many Savoyards are still trying to get l’Education Nationale to recognize it as a minority language so that it will be taught in schools, like they do with le breton, le basque and le corse. Check out arpitania.eu for more information, and you can also download a 1,770 page français-savoyard dictionary in PDF format.

The French expression of the day was: de fil en aiguille, which means “on passe progressivement et naturellement d’une chose à une autre qui lui fait suite.” And the Savoyard recipe of the day was, surprise surprise, Fondue à l’emmental.

Why is Jennie no longer in France?

I created this blog in September 2006 when I moved to France from Michigan to teach English. Many of the earlier posts are about my personal life in France, dealing with culture shock, traveling in Europe and becoming fluent in French. In July 2011, I relocated to Australia to start my PhD in Applied Linguistics. Although I am no longer living in France, my research is on foreign language pedagogy and I teach French at a university so these themes appear most often on the blog. I also continue to post about traveling and being an American abroad.

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